Judging A Book By Its Cover Part 3 cont. And 5 More Covers

If your book is in print, is your back cover photo the same as the front or different? Or is it a panoramic photo, stretching from the front, across the spine, and around the back?

Note:

Today, Thursday (I always put together my blog posts the day before) at 5:30 p.m. pacific time, my blog has had the most page views (135 ) since I created my blog 🙂 And I want to thank all of you for that! And it’s still early 🙂 I haven’t received any covers for Saturday, so not sure if I will have a post for Saturday, but I will on Monday as we continue “Judging a Book By it’s Cover” Remember I would love to have all of you participate and share your blurbs. Once again I will post your front cover, or back if you prefer, a link to amazon or wherever you want, and your blurb, so that everyone can see what your book is about. Chris Ward asked me to let all of you know his book “The Tube Riders” is FREE October 5-7. Which I did in the last post, but I wanted to remind you in case you want to pick up a copy.

Oh and I forgot to tell you I did a guest post for Paul Dorset’s blog! If you get a chance check it out

I am a professional graphic designer first, and writer second – although it would be ok with me if those things switched positions at some point. Truthfully they’re both tough positions, but I enjoy them both and you can’t ask for anything more than to love what you do.

The wings logo is tied to the content of the book and descriptions of it will be mentioned throughout the story, tying things together. The logo will remain the same on all the covers, though the sub name and cover art itself will differ from book to book.

The beginning of the story starts on Earth, in present day, in a familiar, seemingly normal way. The cover needed to tell the reader that, that’s not all there was. That the story was more involved, deeper, darker, more expansive. The artwork was created in Adobe Photoshop using photos, hand drawn and hand painted elements, blending and special effects to get the look I wanted.

Good morning Karen, This is a book of mystery short stories so I wanted a cover picture that was, well, mysterious. I remembered a few foggy street shots that a photographer friend of mine had taken and planned to use one of those. Fitting the type around them proved a challenge and they were more horizontal than vertical.
As the deadline approached and the graphic designer was getting anxious, I went out in my own neighborhood one night with my Canon 50d and tripod and this was the result.

The title was easy. More than half the stories here involve bad guys (crooks) and good guys (cops) but there are other stories as well. And since this is flash fiction I thought it important to include information in the title that would explain that these were ultra-short stories. So, it’s a long title, but it gives the reader a true idea of what’s inside.

Designer Don Markofski chose Agency FB font with a drop shadow and I liked the effect.

The story is about a crime happening in a private island. So I naturally select the title as “The Private Island.”

Why did you choose the colors, pictures, or graphics that are on the front cover?

I selected a picture of an island since the story is set in a private island. I included a picture of a beautiful woman with a gun to indicate that the novel is a murder mystery. I chose bright colors to attract young readers.

Is there a hidden meaning in the overall effect?

No hidden meaning since it is not a literary novel.

Did you design your cover?

I did it myself. I purchased two pictures from dreamstine and merged them with photoshop,

Hello, Karen,I hope you are still in need of covers to feature on your blog. If so, I have included mine as an attachment and its story below.

Designing the cover was surprisingly one of the more difficult tasks of creating “The Fox and the Fawn”. I decided early on that hiring a professional was not in the budget. Once everything else was finished, I sat down to design the cover thinking it would take only a few hours. There were more factors involved than I realized, and those few hours turned into more than two weeks. Finding the right image took some time, but finding the right font and color for that font that would work with the tone of the illustration took nearly a week. I realized just how important the right font and color is, and I probably tried nearly a hundred fonts and color shades before I finally settled on a bright orange, almost gold-colored, Ariel.The cover illustration was chosen because I felt that the scene says so much about the story. I also felt that there is a look of suspense; the fox is leading the fawn somewhere, but neither the fawn nor the observer knows where. Of course practical reasons also played a major role. I needed an illustration that featured both the fawn and the fox, but also allowed enough open space where I could place the title and my name as well as the name of my illustrator.I included two slightly transparent gray boxes for the text to sit on top of in order for the title and our names to be easily seen. The text appeared lost without these boxes, and if they were not slightly transparent, they would look out of place. The transparency allows for a more natural look rather than the appearance of simply being pasted on top of the illustration.The easiest factor was choosing a title. Since the principle characters are a fox and a baby deer, the title was provided by the story.http://www.amazon.com/The-Fox-Fawn-ebook/dp/B007SP25H6

Hi Karen – Just popping by today – can’t help myself! I love to participate wherever book covers are discussed!
The first cover here – Wings of Steele – has a great design but it somehow looks a little squashed down – as if it needs a little vertical stretching. Maybe not the title but the image in the middle needs to be stretched down a bit.
The second cover – Cops & Crooks – has a really clear and nice title – though somehow I am not too fond of all-black covers…
The third one – Private island – is nice except the lady’s face is squashed in from the side – maybe it was designed to be like that but it looks odd, as if the book was too wide and the book store shrunk the cover and pushed it in and messed up the dimensions.
I like the Fox and The Fawn! I find the completely different size of that cover refreshing too.
The last cover – The Silk Code – is superb! It drew me in to read more on Amazon and the descriptions and reviews there further convinced me to buy this book!

Good morning Melody
Thank you for commenting. So if you were to go into a book store and there were 20 books side by side, what would be the first thing to catch your eye? The color? The photo? The title? Since you like book covers, let us know, so that when we go to design our next covers we have a general idea. I actually like the black covers and was going to use that with “The Good Dr. Grant” but found it didn’t compliment the photo as well as the purple color I chose.

Hi Karen! Thank you for inviting me to a further discussion! You are asking me about “if you were to go into a book store…” Well, I assume you are talking about a virtual book store? Online ebook stores are where I mostly hang out, and the first important thing is that there is a big difference between online stores and physical ones, and the same goes for book covers!
If you simply take a printed book cover and place it online, the chances are great that the title will be almost invisible, and the image may be faded too!
There are more than 1 million ebooks up on Amazon. If you want your ebook to be noticed, the title has to be bold and visible, and you need a bold and visible image – or at least a part of it needs to be visible or colourful enough to draw a reader in. Many of the best ebook covers may look a bit overdone on text size if you zoom in – but they sure attract in the thumbnail size in the ebook stores.
Colour is very important too. Black is great but I think there have been too many plain all-black type covers off late in the book stores and I am a little weary of them. Though off course if you are portraying a dark theme some black needs to be there.
Genre is so important too. Your book needs to reflect the genre somehow…I had a look at your “The Good Dr. Grant,” Karen, and no offence – but I would have missed that one in the stores as it doesn’t look like a Romance cover. The title also disappears in the image.
I love all types of Romance novels, also Fantasy, Paranormal and SciFi, so naturally I am drawn to those types of covers. If maybe an attractive man had been added in with the gorgeous dog – now I think that would have attracted my attention! Art is always a subjective thing and each artist has a particular type of style really…so there may be others who completely disagree with me. I love people and faces on covers, it looks personal and warm, especially on romance covers…but I know some artists and authors who prefer a more abstract, conceptualised, symbolic sort of approach. I can design both ways, though…

One thing I have also contemplated is the difference in taste between men and women. Do men and women tend to click on the same type of covers? I guess they generally don’t even read the same type of genre…perhaps men are more into SciFi and Mystery/Suspense plus more abstract covers too? Or do you think they like pretty girls on covers?

This is getting a bit lengthy so I will say cheers for now. I am looking forward to more of your posts.

Hi again Melody. Wow this is great feedback! No offense taken, that’s the goal of this post. To get readers to let us know what they look for in a cover. Since you are a cover designer and reader you have a more critical eye for the details, As for men, I don’t know. I’d love to have them comment and let us know what they think about covers. But I’m thinking a pretty girl would grab their attention. Which is a great point! If I were to have had a sexy girl on the cover of The Good Dr. Grant, would it have targeted a different audience? I guess with my son’s gorgeous dog on the cover, I was targeting the sweet romantics who love dogs. But I do have to say, when I chose Sandi as my cover, I was worried about the people who don’t like pitbulls. I myself said to my son when he sent me her first picture to my phone, “Please tell me that isn’t a pitbull.” But I can honestly say she is sweeter than my chihuahua!